Glencore’s environmental obligations cover returning disturbed land back to a stable and biodiverse ecosystem. Bulga Coal had approximately 850 Ha land under active rehabilitation in 2018, with a key focus on establishing endangered ecological communities.

The challenge:Mining restoration activities are often conducted over challenging terrain to re-create a natural, rugged environment. These environments pose safety and erosional risks as well as limits to efficiency using ground based methods.

The solution:In January 2019, Glencore’s Bulga Coal extended projects with Dendra Systems into aerial seeding. Bulga’s environment team wanted to incorporate automated aerial seeding into its rehabilitation program to address 3 primary needs:

1) Enable access to challenging environments2) Improved site safety, and 3) Reduced erosion risk

Dendra’s SKAI TractorTM was used to seed both native woodland seed mixes as well as pasture mixes to rehabilitate contoured slopes. SKAI ScanTM was used to map the land before seeding to assist in planning, with post-rain monitoring to assess initial germination.

Automated Aerial Seeding for Rehabilitation

Glencore is Australia’s largest coal producer with 16 mining operations across New South Wales and Queensland.

Australian coal production: 103 million tonnes (2018)

Australian Operations:11 Open Cut mines, 4 Underground mines

Market Cap: $33bn

Australian Rehabilitation Investment: more than $48 million (2018)

Australian Rehabilitated Area: 1,530 Ha (2018)

Intelligence

SKAI-Scan SKAI-Analytics

SKAI-Board SKAI-Planner

Automation SKAI-Tractor SKAI-Pod

Before:● Tractor breakdowns causing delays to seeding● Safety risks due to operation on steep, rocky slopes● Increased erosion risk due to tractors driving over rip lines

After:● Aerial seeding overcoming terrain access issues● Geo-tagged seeding operations● Decreased soil compaction and disturbance due to aerial

operations● Seeding - data integration for before and after monitoring

Benefits:● Decreased down time due to tractor repairs● Decreased soil compaction and disturbance● Decreased health and safety risk likelihood

Dendra Systems Contact Details:

Dendra Systems provides restoration services across automated planting and ecosystem intelligence analytics for the natural world

mining@dendra.iowww.dendra.io

Address:Suite 3, 112 John StreetSingletonNew South Wales, 2330

Automated Aerial Seeding for Rehabilitation